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RIDING LIGHTNING
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Imma be deadass w y'all,
the chapters in the lab r probably some of my worst writing ever LMAO
I SWEAR IT GETS BETTER, J WAIT UNTIL LJ GETS BACK TO POLIS
LYRA'S GOT HIGH HOPES for this whole nightblood thing.
Her holy shit when she saw Becca's labs might have been a bit of an under reaction. Becca's labs are by far the coolest thing she's ever seen. Much like Becca's station in space ━━ the thirteenth Ark station that was blown out of the sky, Polaris ━━ it is all glossy white and shimmering blues. Everything is high tech, sleek and advanced. Spotless. Computers upon computers with monitors and so much high-tech equipment that Lyra could cry. This is better than anything she could have ever hoped for on the Ark and she found it here, in the middle of an apocalyptic and war-torn planet.
"Computer," calls Lyra cheerfully as she bounds up the steps of the lofted lab. "Show me through radiation detection software available for the drone fleet in VHDL."
An enormous monitor spanning the back wall flickers to life. VHDL id a hardware description language and it models the behaviour and structure of the digital systems of the drones at multiple levels of abstraction. This ranges from the system level down to that of logical gates.
Pen and spiral notebook in hand ━━ a spare notebook that had belonged to Becca once, Lyra thinks giddily ━━ Lyra comes to the flat-top, faultless table that Abby and Jackson are at. Abby uses an enormous microscope to peer at nightblood cell samples from Luna. Jackson is typing something furiously into a keyboard as the monitor before him keeps up easily.
"LJ, you seeing this?" Raven calls from the main floor of the lab. "FPGA prototypes for stabilisation!"
She's talking about the drones. Lyra scribbles that down. "I'm seeing it!"
"God, Becca was good," Jackson is saying to Abby. "Nightblood was designed to help the human body not reject the AI and protect it against radiation emitted from the device. That's why it saved Luna."
"That's why it'll save us all," responds Abby, hyper-focused on the samples. "If we can figure out how she made these cells combine."
Lyra peeks over at Jackson's monitor. "Well, it looks like Becca was experimenting with perfluorochemicals, oxygenated. Y'know, the building blocks of artificial blood."
"I know what they are," Abby retorts snappishly. Then she pauses. "When did you become an expert molecular biology?"
"Last night," says Lyra casually.
Abby and Jackson stare at her.
"What?" Lyra asks defensively. "I'm allowed to do a little bit of light reading."
"That's not light reading," argues Abby. "And it's impossible for anyone to pick up on something like that — anyone."
"Well, I did it." Lyra shrugs. She doesn't understand why Abby's bring so weird about it. "I've been scanning the databases, but I don't think the formula is in there. Nobody's going to invent something like this and then store it somewhere where everyone can see it. I think we'll have to reverse-engineer it from Luna's blood."
Abby eyes her warily. At last, her shoulders sag as if she is too tired to question it. "I'll need a new sample. Where's Luna?"
Jackson straightens. "She's sleeping, and we should let her. We've taken too much already. . . "
Their voices drift through the air as Lyra hyper-focuses on the monitor that's switched to mirror Jackson's. She sketches out the cell frantically onto a new page of her notebook. The lab is frigid, yet she doesn't seem to notice it at all.
In fact, her skin feels hot. Too hot. It's almost itchy. She rubs at her arm in frustration and blows a sweaty strand of hair out of her face. Her mind seems to be working faster than her hands and she can feel her frustrations mounting as she struggles to map out all her thoughts on the page. Her mind has always moved at a mile per minute, but this is somehow faster ━━
Everything goes deathly quiet.
Lyra's head snaps up. Did everyone stop talking?
A sharp ringing noise pierces through her skull.
Lyra hisses in pain. Limbs waxen, her hands fly up to massage her temples while her notebook and pen clatter to the glossy tile. Her eyes screw shut as her head rolls with pain. Some sort of nausea creeps into her stomach and Lyra desperately hopes it won't overwhelm her. She refuses to throw up in Becca's labs. Heart rampaging inside of her ribs, she tried to grasp what's going on, but she can't. Bells ring fully in the back of her mind. Every part of her is trembling.
All she can feel is this strange new pain as she fights for composure ━━ everything feels blurry, as if she is walking the fine line between reality and dreams.
Her eyes fly open. . .
. . . only to find that she is among the stars.
Just her and the obsidian abyss, pockmarked with silver supernovas that surge against sticky shadows. Burning, seething, cackling. Saving her from being swallowed whole.
She is weightless. Her entire body trembles with gleeful anticipation. She never thought she'd get her spacewalk again. But somehow, against all odds, she is. For one beautiful, fleeting eternity, she is drifting through the opulent cosmos once again. Dull white rock gleams somewhere behind her, the moon shimmering brightly in her small piece of the universe. Stretching out ahead of her is the glimmering sapphire globe that is Earth.
Bubbly laughter escapes Lyra as she drifts through the Milky Way. Galaxies pool in her eyes. The blood of stars trickle into her veins and seep luminary into her bones.
Something creeps into her line of vision and Lyra stops drifting towards the Earth. Energy seems to vibrate from her very fingertips as she swims easily through the galaxy, turning around. The darkness is disturbed by the GoSci Station and for a moment, Lyra's lips tug into a frown.
The Ark's Ring. It's lit up.
Yet that us not the only thing hung in the vastness of the cosmos. There is something else, a strange sort of ship with letters scrawled onto the side. Too far away for Lyra to read and so she paddles closer, swimming through stars, and it takes her a moment but then ━━
Polaris.
Becca's laboratories.
Somehow ━━ somehow ━━ Lyra knows she has to get there. As if everything she needs to know is hidden within those labs. Supernovas surge through her veins as determination explodes within her. Her heart is beating so fast that it feels as if it might beat straight out of her chest. All the answers are there, right at her fingertips. All she has to do is get back to Polaris.
She has to. She has to. She has to ━━
Suddenly, she is jerked backwards.
"I don't know what happened!" Murphy's distorted voice swims around her. "One minute she's standing, the next minute she's — "
" — having a seizure," Abby announces with some hint of panic in her muffled voice. "Turn her over onto her side, quickly! Jackson we need to get her to medical. . . "
Lyra tries to bat the invisible tether away. Can't they see that she needs to do this?
"Lyra, can you hear me?" Abby's voice clarifies through the muddled fog of Lyra's mind. "Lyra, everything is going to be OK. . . "
͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙
BLAZING WHITE LIGHT stabs into Lyra's eyes as she stirs into consciousness. She blinks, white stars swirling across her vision, twinkling brightly without stop. They blister and burn. She rolls her eyelids shut and dips back into the molten shadows all over again. It takes her a heartbeat to build up the confidence to open them a second time.
Her limbs feel waxen as she tries to gather her senses. Everything around her is pale as ice. It must be the earliest dawn; pale pink light flutters through the chambers. The mattress beneath her is stiff as iron and she is propped up by a single lumpy pillow. Her brows furrow as she tries to figure out what in the fresh hell had happened. . .
"Morning, Sleeping Beauty."
Lyra blinks sleepily. "John?"
"In the flesh." He watches her curiously and then cocks his head to the side almost casually. "Guess you're pretty lucky your dad got shot and went back to Arkadia. He'd totally flip out if he saw your little seizure moment."
Lyra stares at him. "I didn't have a seizure."
"Ooh, denial?" Murphy waggles his brows. "I'm not doing this — hey, Miller! Jackson! She's up!"
"So's Raven!" Jackson calls back.
"You and Raven both had seizures," Murphy informs her as Lyra shoots him a questioning glance. "Which is way too freaky for me to think about. But the good news is that you're not the only mental patient — "
Almost bursting from her skin, Lyra forces herself to her feet. She did not have a seizure. How could she have? She has never felt so alive.
"Woah, woah, woah!" Nate dashes towards her in an attempt to force her to sit back down. "LJ, you should not be walking right now — "
But Lyra can feel starlight in her blood. How can they not see that? Her bones are shivering and singing all at once. Simmering beneath her sun-kissed skin is a firestorm. Lathering her heart, all thunder and boiling crimson flame that hums through her body and crackles in her eyes. And if there is a fire within her then she had become fireproof because it does not burn. It only allows her withered soul to be illuminated as sweet golden light drifts through her being. It's as if the ichor of the gods of Olympus has somehow worked it's way inside of her, saving her from whatever grim damnation she had been spiralling towards. She feels as if she is riding lightning.
"I can't sit down," she breathes almost dreamily. "My brain is moving so — so fast, I can barely keep up with it."
She stares at the labs around her in wonder, as if seeing them for the first time again.
"It's like I can feel the frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes being overactive. Neurons are firing almost constantly. And what I saw. . . it was so real. . . "
"Like you were spacewalking again?"
Lyra's head jerks up. She finds herself standing just inches away from Raven. Her eyes glitter like stars and a vibrant smile weaves across Lyra's mouth while her heart puddles in her ribs. She nods her head eagerly. It feels so good to be understood.
"Zero g," continues Raven radiantly. "No suit."
"I saw the stars," whispers Lyra. "It felt so real."
"Weightlessness. . . " Raven trails off, looking lost in thought. She faces Lyra with new intensity. "What happened when Abby tried to get the nightblood protein to bond with Luna's DNA?"
"The structure of the RNA fell apart," answers Lyra promptly.
"Why?" Abby presses Raven.
"Abby," Jackson cuts in sharply. "They just had seizures."
"I know why," Lyra answers for Raven. She chases that feeling, the weightlessness, how she'd felt soaring through the stars. "Becca couldn't make it work in this lab — Computer, show me prototype Nightblood RNA binding in a zero G environment."
DNA spirals across the inky black monitor as the computer complies. Lyra turns to face Abby with a breathless, triumphant grin.
Abby stares in awe. "It would. . . it would work."
"Simulation complete," chirps the computer obediently.
Jackson stares between Raven and Lyra. "Your hallucinations. . . they told you this?"
"Yes," says Raven eagerly. "When I imagined I was weightless, my neurons must have been firing faster than my conscious mind could process."
"Communicating through your subconscious," guesses Jackson.
"Exactly!" Raven exclaims brightly.
"How do we simulate zero gravity in a laboratory environment?" Abby questions.
"We can't," Jackson says. "It's impossible."
The answer comes to Lyra's mind so quickly that it feels as if she's been struck by lightning. She bites back laughter. She'd spent so long pouring over notes and sifting through databases only for the answer to be sitting underneath her nose the entire time.
"It's impossible on Earth," she agrees cheerfully. "Alie said that Becca went to space looking for a more secure environment to get away from her, but I don't think that was the reason at all. I think she went to space to make Nightblood."
"Lyra, how does that help us?" Abby begins to look defeated. "We'll never get back into space."
"Never say never." Lyra's eyes sparkle with anticipation as she bounds forwards. "Computer! Open interior blast and launch doors!"
The entire lab shudders. An enormous slab of what Lyra had once assumed to be walls pries itself apart, towering high over her head, dwarfing her. She can feel herself trembling all over with anticipation as she watches giddily. The walls continue to rumble, slinking to the left and to the right, before unveiling a set of stairs. The stairs crawl upwards, and as Lyra's eyes follow them upwards, she feels her breath catch in her throat.
It's a rocket.
Her grin nearly splits her face in two. "Guess I'm getting my spacewalk after all."
͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙
LYRA FEELS LIKE she is riding lightning.
Her mind feels like thunderstorm barely caged by her opal bones, raging dangerously fast. The shock of it all buzzes in her veins. Some of it is overwhelming disbelief at how quickly the solution has come to her fingertips, some of it is pure awe at what she has become. Every step she takes, every passing breath, she is more she more aware of how her mind is blossoming.
Dozens of monitors flicker with lights, text, and images; from diagrams of the rocket's hardware to the different software programs running it and everything in between. Raven is darting back and forth among the smaller screens where the engineering schematics are displayed. In the meanwhile, Lyra has taken interest to the enormous hardware display that allow her to take a peak into what the rocket's made from. It's fascinating. Her pulse quickens out of excitement.
"There's a flight simulator built into the rockets software!" Raven calls giddily. "Get this hair net off me so I can strap in and give her a whirl!"
The hair net refers to the brain-monitoring headpiece that Abby's shoved onto both Raven and Lyra. Apparently having a seizure isn't a great sign for your health. Who knew?
"A flight simulator?" Lyra's head pokes up earnestly. "You mean I get to be a pilot?"
"Not yet!" Abby's voice echoes through the labs. She's standing by the medical equipment with Jackson, both of them busy analysing the brain scans. Lyra is too distracted to care about what they might be seeing. "Keep doing what you're doing. This is important!"
"Lame. I want to go to space," Lyra fights the urge to stick her tongue out at Abby. "There's no fuel in the tank."
"Go figure," responds Raven, but she doesn't look particularly disheartened. "There's plenty of hydrazine back in Arkadia. We can have it here in a day."
"T-minus 24 hours and counting to spacewalk!" If Lyra could smile any wider, it would split her face into two. "Can you believe that? We're gonna get to go back to the stars — "
"OK, Lyra." Abby has descended the steps and now grabs Lyra's shoulders in an almost motherly manner to force the energetic girl to pause. Abby fixates her with a very stern look. "I need you to slow down — "
Lyra laughs. "Slow down? I'm at the top of my game! I'm right there with the Nightblood solution! And, Abby, in case you haven't noticed. . . we — have — a — rocket!"
"A two-seater, by the way," Raven reminds her with a grin. "I drive. You get the spacewalk. Sound like a plan?"
Lyra wants to do both, but that isn't exactly fair. "Deal."
The look Abby gives the two of them is so serious that Raven's smile begins to slip. "What?"
"Listen to me." Abby gently lifts the brain-monitor from Raven's locks and Lyra anxiously takes her own off, handing it over. "Heightened mental ability, hallucinations, euphoria, headaches — it's all connected. Alie warned you that the EMP would cause brain damage."
Lyra swallows thickly. That is not something that she wants to think about.
"Jasper was right," Raven breathes out. "That's why no one else got an upgrade."
Abby arches a brow. "What are you talking about?"
"For everyone else, Clarke pulled the master kill switch. It's — it's like shutting down a program the right way," explains Raven. "When the EMP fried my chip, it was more like cutting the power from the OS while the ram was still full. But. . . "
"But what?" Lyra presses.
Raven looks at her uneasily. "You left the City of Light because of Clarke, didn't you?"
Lyra shakes her head numbly. "In Becca's lab, Alie gave me back my pain. I guess my reaction to it must have been pretty extreme because. . . because just before Clarke pulled the switch. . . Bellamy EMP'd me."
The look Abby gives her is so sorrowful that it immediately puts Lyra on the defensive. Bellamy had been trying to save her.
And maybe he did. Maybe Lyra needed to become this better version of herself.
Even if it could hurt her.
"Part of Alie's code is still in our heads," continues Lyra briskly. "I guess that's why we know things that we shouldn't."
"Becca's mind was in that code," Abby realises out-loud. "That's why you knew where the rocket was."
That eager feeling returns to Lyra. "And now I get to fly it."
"Wait." Abby's anxiety-riddled voice has Lyra stopping in her tracks. "Lyra. Raven. Your brain scans showed evidence of a stroke. I'm afraid that if you two keep pushing like this. . . it's just going to make things worse."
"I've been through worse, Doc," Raven answers.
"Not worse than this," Abby insists. "Lyra, Raven, this won't just hurt you. . . it could kill you."
Lyra sucks in a deep breath.
There it is. What she's been waiting to hear ever since she woke up. She can't say that she's surprised, either. Somehow, she thinks a part of her has always known that it was going to end like this. . .
"Could. . . or will?" Raven asks quietly. In her eerie calm, there is stony resolve. "So, what? I survive long enough for everyone else to die? I can't do that, Abby. Even if it costs me my life. . . you have to let me go."
"And you, Lyra?" Abby's voice pierces through Lyra's cloudy mind; she doesn't want to be having this conversation. "Are you really about to throw away your life?"
Lyra doesn't meet Abby's eyes.
"What would Noah think?" Abby presses. "What would Bellamy think?"
"Does it matter what they think?" Lyra can hardly breathe. Her eyes needle with tears. "If I do this, I'll die from brain damage. If I don't do this, I'll die from radiation."
"We don't know that — "
"Yes, we do!" Lyra says sharply. "It's a lose-lose situation. But at least if I do this. . . then I won't have to watch the people I love die with me."
"Instead they'll watch you die," Abby says lowly. "I don't know if they'll ever forgive you."
Lyra lifts her shoulders into a listless shrug as she blinks back tears.
"Doesn't matter. I'll be dead anyways."
͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙
lyra rn:
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